About a thousand words

Having been a blogger now since 2008, I still have difficulty defining exactly what a blog is for, and why I keep one. And while keeping one, I find it impossible to predict which of the things I write about will stick around in the collective blogsphere, and which will sink without trace. What’s also mysterious and sometimes disappointing is why I should care.

I wrote recently about my car being mistaken for another which went through the Dartford tunnel without paying the toll. I was consequently fined for this misdeed, even though I’ve not been near the Dartford tunnel in twenty years – so I went on a bit in the blog, dissolving the indignation I felt at being incorrectly fingered. It was a cathartic process which led to a short blog piece, plus a more philosophical acceptance of the absurdity, even an eventual smile.

But that piece didn’t appear at all in the listings of Google or Bing or Yahoo. I had thought it might touch a collective chord among others who had been incorrectly fingered in the same way, but it was not to be. Only regular followers saw it, and my gentle rant has now sunk without a trace, like a stone dropped into the deep. Even searching directly for it with the title in quotes will not yield it. I was miffed. I was even prepared to believe the great search engines of the cloud had been nobbled by the technocracy in order to prevent news of my dissent reaching a wider audience.

Ah, if only I were so influential!

So, blogging cannot be about the rant, more something within ourselves that is released by the act, rather in the same way that talking to a stranger can relieve anxieties. It cannot be about setting fire to the world with the white heat of one’s rage, or even the friction of one’s abrasive personality as we jump up and down in daily indignation. We will simply wear ourselves out, thinking perhaps to make the whole world sit up and cry in sympathy, when in fact no one is listening, or really cares that much.

Is blogging then more about the now? Is it about what fascinates us, irritates us, puzzles us now? And like all such ephemera, should it be let go of and moved on from at once? In writing about it, are we merely exploring the feelings we feel right now, and when we hit “publish”, in doing so, do we merely jettison the bag we have been filling with crap, then watch it bob along on the ocean waves until it’s out of sight? Is it, ughh, merely a purgative process?

Jihad! Yes, you heard. It’s a much misused term these days, and I shall have to be careful with my context here or unwelcome ears on both sides of the divide will be pricking, but my understanding of it, and of the Dalai Llama’s incidentally, is that Jihad is a war primarily with one’s own recalcitrant nature. Is the blog then a useful part of waging personal Jihad? We winkle out the warring factions in our selves, as if they were parasitic worms wriggling in our guts, and then we forget them, we leave them by the wayside to shrivel in the sun. But do we do this willingly, and without regret? Or is each piece lost this way like shedding a piece of one’s skin? And we have only so much to go at before we are dust. Is blogging as a means of personal Jihad, of spiritual development, simply too exhausting?

In 2008 I wrote about the opening of the mowing season, and I wrote about my old Ensign B17 mower. In seven years, I don’t think that piece has been visited once. Like my rant about the Dartford tunnel, it is buried in the deep sediment of the internet, but it hardly matters because neither piece was ever going to change the world. Other pieces do stick though. They become linked to other bloggers’ thoughts, like grappling lines hauling them clear of the sedimentary layers to appear again and again in my stats of links clicked: Tea Tree Oil and Verrucas. Malt vinegar and nits. Soul Spirit and Self. Time-slip stories. Is Lulu.com a Scam? These are not rants, nor are they pieces of personal Jihad. These are informational pieces, curiosities that chime with the curiosity of others, bits of experience passed on.

Is this piece informative then? Or is it merely another of those blogging about blogging pieces? How pointless is that? Or worse, is it perhaps one of those pieces about getting noticed, or not, and why it doesn’t matter? I’ve written plenty of those, write about them all the time, why going unnoticed, or not, in life, or in writing, does not matter. But here the lady doth protest too much! If it did not matter, I would not write a blog about it. Instead I would confine ramblings along those lines to my private journal, instead of inviting connection.

Ah yes, connection! All too often I forget blogging is also a community. The connections we invite are with followers, and those we follow, or will follow and who we hope will follow us, and I am shamefully neglectful in that sense, inviting others to read my stuff, while rarely finding the time to read theirs. If I sought argument, or consensus, I would make more of the community, spend as much time commenting, and liking and following, as I do writing. But I don’t. I just write. A lot.

My,… writers are complicated creatures.

Possibly also mad.

So what is it? What is blogging about? Obviously I don’t know. Not entirely at least. But what I do know is there is always going to be a gap between the reality of one’s life and one’s aspiration, and the road from frustration at that gap to the magnanimity which closes it, is always going to be about a thousand words.

Thanks for listening.

Publishhhhh!